Disclosure: I was raised to look for the good no matter how much bad abounds.
Which is why I’m refusing to get all bent out of shape about the long lines and equipment malfunctions that, at several vote centers, turned Tuesday’s election into an ordeal.
I’m not saying that standing in line is fun; as a matter of fact, I don’t like it at all. But I have to agree with what Mayor John Hickenlooper said this afternoon when we ran into each other in the Denver Newspaper Agency building lobby: Adversity isn’t necessarily bad.
“It was like a blizzard,” Hickenlooper said. “People were coming together and bonding.”
That’s how it was around noon Tuesday at Central Christian Church on Cherry Creek Drive South. Perfect strangers were talking to each other, and it didn’t take long for all the war stories to morph into other, more pleasant, topics.
The fellow who arrived fuming because the vote center most convenient to his workplace had a 2.5-hour wait was soon talking to the woman behind him about all the good restaurants in nearby Cherry Creek North that served lunch. The 20-somethings ahead of me hadn’t known each other before standing in line to vote, but soon discovered they had a shared interest in skiing, especially downhilling on the slopes at Winter Park.
And had I known I’d run into so many people I know, I’d have worn something other than a ratty old sweatshirt and jeans. Maybe even put on makeup and combed my hair.
In the 40 minutes it took me to sign in and vote, I saw former Denver Nugget Chuck Williams, Denver Art Museum supporter Judy Robins and the chairman of the Central City Opera board, Ed Nichols.Selena Dunham voted early near her Aurora home, but waited patiently at Central Christian while her mom cast her ballot. Michelle Toltz was leaving just as I entered, and Lynda Dalton, a past president of the Central City Opera Guild did her civic duty just minutes before Ed Nichols arrived.
My friend Elizabeth Byrnes Crony of dovetail solutions told me of a similar situation at the church where she and hubby Ed Crony voted. Though their wait extended for the better part of two hours, Elizabeth said that people around them were getting to know each other … talking instead of avoiding eye contact and plastering cell phones to their ears.
Someone even passed out Oreo cookies to make the wait as sweet as possible.

Study after study has shown that when it comes to charitable fundraisers, Denver has more per capita than any comparably sized city in the nation. Joanne Davidson has been covering them for The Denver Post since 1985, coming here from her native California where she'd spent the previous seven years as San Francisco bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report magazine.